Sanding/deburring heads formed by joining together a plurality of skip-cut strips of flexible abrasive sheet material in a fan shaped orientation are well known and commonly referred to as "Star" heads. Star heads are widely used to perform wood sanding and metal deburring operations depending on the rotational speed at which the heads are driven and/or the composition of the sheet materials from which the skip-cut strips are formed.
Star heads are typically formed by first providing parallel lengthwise extending skip-cuts in an elongated strip of suitable abrasive material, such as may be supplied by a roll, and then transversely severing the elongated strip to provide individual strips whose lengths correspond to the diameter of a head to be formed. As an incident to the forming operation, the individual strips are each provided with a centrally located mounting opening. After the individual strips are formed, they are assembled on a mandrel with their mounting openings disposed in alignment and to lie in a fan-like orientation, wherein the edges of adjacent strips overlie one another in a direction extending annularly of the mounting openings until a sufficient number of strips are assembled to provide a disc-shaped, plan view configuration. Thereafter the assembled strips are joined by a grommet bounding their mounting openings.
Star heads suffer the drawbacks of their being relatively expensive to manufacture and relatively stiff, as compared to the abrasive material from which they are formed. Moreover, the degree of stiffness of Star heads increases as their diameters decrease, due to the wearing away of their peripheries during use, and as a result, Star heads became unsuitable for sanding contoured surfaces after relatively little use.